Кроха - Dedication

Well, Joe thought, the Bleak job will finish soon and Ben will be working full-time to finish the shelter; he’ll like that better. Though Joe did wonder why Ben was so uncomfortable around Tekla, more upset at her harassment than seemed warranted.

Well, who could blame him? Joe avoided the woman, too. Now, watching Ben, the tomcat had no idea that by the next morning his idyllic picture of the young man would have changed radically—and that Joe himself would be thrown into the middle of the tangle.

9

That blonde that spotted the attack had nearly messed them up, she ran faster than you’d expect, almost got a good look and ruined it all. A hasty retreat and no harm done, but way too close—left a person shaking with nervous sweat.

But that was the only time there was trouble. All in all, every new assault was a blast. Shadowing the victims, learning their habits, learning the paths they took among the village stores, knowing where they lived and where they shopped. Watching the places they worked, where they ate if they ate out. Pausing in a doorway, waiting, silent in the shadows, that was the best part. The sudden hit—slip up with no sound, one good shove and it was done. See them fall scared and struggling and you were gone before they got a glimpse. A fast attack, then gone. How easy was that?

Well, it should have been the same this time except the damned blonde got in the way. She had a cell phone—did she get a picture? If so, it couldn’t be much. A running smear from the back. Hell, she didn’t see anything. What could she tell the cops? Anyway, that mark had been just a shill. Tomorrow would be a real one again. Tomorrow’s target knew something, knew too much and needed taking out. Tomorrow when they’d be alone, just the two of them.

It was near dawn when the setting moon angled into Joe Grey’s tower so bright that, even deep in sleep, he tucked his face under the pillows. But the afterglow stayed in his head, brought him half awake. Wriggling around, he scowled out at the offending yellow orb. Damn moon brighter than a streetlight slanting in through the oak and pine branches.

The moon had been high when he galloped home from hunting late last night, his belly full of mice atop his earlier spaghetti supper—a good hunt even if Dulcie had wanted to stay to the grassy hill that rose behind her own cottage. He was chagrined that he hadn’t been concerned, days earlier, when she preferred to stay within the village instead of out on the far hills. Why wasn’t I puzzled that my lady was slowing down?

Tomcat inattention, he thought. All wrapped up in my own interests. Expecting her to be as irate at these new crimes as she always is at village violence. I never wondered at all why she was so preoccupied.

But even though he hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s motherly condition, he had seen a different look in her eyes. That alone should have clued him in. He’d wondered only briefly what that calm look was, that deep contentment in her easy glance. He’d put it down to some passing mood, thinking,Who can understand females? He should have paid more attention, should have figured it out without having to be told. But no, not for one minute had he taken time to wonder.

Ryan had said, late last night as she climbed into bed and Joe leaped to the rafters, ready to head out to hunt, “Be careful with her, Joe. Hunt close to home, and hunt easy.” She’d pulled the covers up over her silk nightie. “Please be careful, you don’t want to stress her. Not with those precious kittens.”

Well, hell, he knew that.

“Listen to Dr. Firetti,” she’d scolded. “We’re all eager for those little kittens to be healthy and strong.”

Joe had flicked his ears in annoyance, bolted across his rafter and out his cat door.

But he’d made sure Dulcie had an easy hunt among the tall grass where the field mice thrived. He had watched her gobble mice as if she couldn’t get enough.

“Taurine,” she’d told him when at last she’d stretched out in the grass to rest. “Cats need taurine, and maybe I need more now for the kittens. We don’t make our own, like people do.” Where did she get this stuff? From Wilma? Did she and Wilma find these things online? Or had Dr. Firetti told them? Taurine, he thought. No wonder a cat craved mice.

It had been around two a.m. when he’d escorted Dulcie through her cat door and headed home himself. He found it hard to get used to his tame, sedate lady, hard to forget her wild days when, too often, he’d had trouble keeping up with her. He guessed those times would return. He hoped so. He felt tender and frightened for her, but he missed her devil-may-care fearlessness. Now, rolling over among the pillows again to block out the setting moon, he burrowed under and slept once more, deeply.

It was a reflection from the low rising sun that pulled him from the depths this time, that stirred him just enough to smell coffee brewing. Then an urgent banging, which woke him fully. He leaped from the pillows to stare around at the dawn-bright roofs and treetops. The pounding came again, from below, from the front door, and Billy Young’s voice, “Ryan? Clyde?” A quavering, shaky voice not like Billy. Joe pushed out through the tower’s open window, leaped across the shingles, and peered over.

The slim, brown-haired boy stood with his back to the front door, pressed against it watching the street fearfully in both directions, his thin face white, even his high, ruddy cheekbones white, his fists clenched. The door opened so suddenly behind him that he nearly fell inside.

Swinging around, he pushed in beside Ryan and slammed the door closed.

Startled, Joe Grey fled in through his tower onto the rafter, hit Clyde’s desk, and was downstairs before Ryan and Billy reached the kitchen. Clyde, startled, turned from the stove where he was frying eggs. Joe leaped to the table as Ryan urged Billy to sit down. He was trembling and out of breath, his dark eyes huge. She reached for the freshly brewed coffee, added milk for him. “You ran here from the job?”

Mutely, Billy nodded.

Putting the cup on the table and fetching her own coffee, she sat down next to him. At the stove Clyde dished up the eggs and set them aside. Refilling his coffee cup, he joined them. Both were quiet, waiting for Billy to collect himself. When Joe heard the familiar sound of Max Harper’s truck go by, Billy heard it, too, and glanced nervously in that direction. When Ryan took Billy’s hand, gently undoing his fist, he gripped her fingers hard, needing that strong human touch.

Only Joe heard the softer sound of the medics’ van slip by the house, following Max. No one else looked up. The medics were not using their siren, as if they didn’t want to be heard heading for the building site. What had happened? Surely there’d been an accident—but who was hurt, to call out the rescue team?

Oh, not Scotty, Joe thought. Ryan’s big redheaded uncle was often at work early—but the tall Scots-Irishman seemed as indestructible as stone. Is it young Ben Stonewell? He thought, shivering. But maybe only some local, poking around the building, fell over a stack of lumber? It was hard as hell to sit still, not to race out and follow the action.

“Max dropped me off at the job,” Billy was saying, “and went on to work. I was early, Scotty wasn’t there yet. No one . . . I used my key, went on in. Opened the garage from inside, then went out again and around to get some tools . . .” He cupped his hands around the warm mug, sat silently staring into it. Seeing what ugly replay, that he could hardly talk about?

At last, quietly, he looked up at Ryan and Clyde.

“Ben Stonewell,” the boy whispered. “Ben is . . . Ben is dead. Lying there, the ladder fallen over him . . . blood everywhere. I . . . I called Max on my cell. Dead,” he repeated, looking at them, lost and pale. “Lying there in the side yard, so much blood . . . the ladder down on top of him.” He wiped his eyes. “I guess he’d been working on the roof gutters. I thought at first he fell, then I saw the blood . . . then the bullet wound. A terrible hole, had to be a gunshot.” He wiped at his eyes. “He couldn’t have lived . . . A hole in the back of his jacket and up through his throat. Blood underneath where he fell . . .”

Ryan put her arms around the boy. She held him tight, her cheek against his forehead, her hands gripping his shoulders to steady him.

“I shouldn’t have left him there alone,” Billy said. “Dead, and alone. I was afraid the killer . . . that they might still be there. That they’d think I saw them and would come after me, too.”

“Did you see anyone?” Clyde said.

“No one.” Billy looked up at Clyde. “Ben never hurt anyone, never wanted to hurt anyone. How could someone . . . Why would somebody . . . ?”

Joe stretched out across the table close to the boy, put his paw on Billy’s arm. Billy had already been through the trauma of his gram’s death. The shock of seeing Gram’s frail, charred body on the medics’ stretcher, covered with a sheet outside their burned cabin, a memory that could never go away. That had been about a year ago, when Billy was twelve. Now Joe hurt for the boy in a different way than he hurt for poor Ben. Ben was dead, was at peace now from whatever horror had happened to him; he was hopefully in a kinder place. But Billy was feeling it all, the shock, the pain, the terror. why would someone hurt Ben Stonewell? What had he done that someone wanted him dead?

It was a while before Billy quieted, before he grew steadier and some color returned to his face. When he seemed stronger, he and Ryan and Clyde piled into the king cab and headed for the remodel. Joe Grey, slipping out behind them, leaped into the truck bed among the tools and folded tarps and old jackets. A stack of oak boards was strapped to one side. Clyde’s glance back at him, as Clyde stepped up into the passenger seat, told Joe he’d better make himself scarce at the scene.

Clyde knew that no one could keep him away. Clyde’s Get lost look was only an empty threat. Riding in the bumpy truck the four blocks to the brown cottage, Joe, despite his pain for Ben, was thankful it wasn’t Ryan or Scotty or Billy lying dead. Had some drug-crazy vagrant, seeing the property vacant and under construction, maybe camped there overnight? And when Ben came to work early they’d panicked. Maybe the killer had a record, maybe there was a warrant out for him. He didn’t want Ben calling the cops, and in a panic he’d shot Ben? Maybe someone on drugs with his brain all scrambled?

According to Billy, Ben must have been up on the ladder when he was shot, working on the roof minding his own business, not confronting some trespasser. But they shot him anyway, Joe thought. And what if Billy had gotten to work first? Would they have killed Billy instead? A murder as coldly senseless as the random street attacks.

Senseless? Joe thought. Random? We don’t know that. No one thinks those attacks were without reason.

Ryan slowed the truck a block from the remodel and drew to the curb. Officer Jimmie McFarland stood in the center of the intersection rerouting traffic, sending rubberneckers down the side streets. McFarland with his boyish smile, his brown hair fallen over his forehead, looked like he should still be in college, not in a police uniform. Seeing it was Ryan and Clyde, he waved them on through to the next intersection, which was blocked off with sawhorses. There, when Ryan parked next to the coroner’s van, Joe leaped out of the truck bed and into the bushes. The Bleaks’ cottage was three doors down. He hightailed it through overgrown back gardens and beneath the yellow crime tape that now marked off the Bleaks’ weedy property. At the far side of the cottage he slipped into the neighbors’ hedge and peered out.